How businesses can grow $1 to $14 by reducing food waste

A new report concludes that global food waste amounts to economic losses of $940 billion per year and gives recommendations for curbing it.

|
Ted S. Warren/AP
David Morales, a garbage driver with Recology, dumps a garbage container for Seattle Public Utilities, Friday, April 15, 2016, in Seattle.

A report from Champions 12.3, The Business Case For Reducing Food Loss And Waste, finds that the average business will earn a $14 return for every $1 invested in food loss and waste reduction. 

Champions 12.3 is a coalition of nearly 40 decision makers from governments, businesses, international organizations, research institutions, farmer groups, and civil society dedicated to mobilizing action and accelerating progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 by 2030.

SDG Target 12.3 calls for cutting global food waste in half, per capita, at the retail and consumer level, while reducing food losses along production and supply chains by 2030. At the U.N. General Assembly, countries of the world formally adopted a set of 17 SDGs as part of the Post-2015 Development Agenda—global goals to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.

This report financially incentivizes businesses to make strategic food waste and loss reduction decisions, presenting a significant 14:1 return on investment (ROI). Business leaders can make use of this evidence to drive forward innovation so that global food systems become more sustainable and communities thrive.

A toolkit presented by Think.Eat.Save—founded by Save Food as a joint initiative between U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP), the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Messe Düsseldorf, and interpack—explains that at least one-third of all food produced worldwide is either lost or wasted each year. This percentage translates to more than 1.3 billion tons of food, worth around $1 trillion. According to a report by Rethink Food Waste Through Economics and Data (ReFED), $218 billion is spent growing, processing, transporting, and disposing of food that is never eaten in the United States alone.

In addition to the economic cost, every piece of chicken, bag of produce, or loaf of bread thrown away is a loss of soils, energy, water, fertilizer, and labor. Reducing food loss and waste saves natural resources—according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 1.4 billion hectares of land produces food that is never eaten. This number equates to 28 percent of the world’s agricultural area, which is larger than the land area of China and India.

Knowing that reducing food loss and waste earns companies an average of a 14:1 ROI is helpful for everyone from business leaders to consumers. Other findings from the Champions 12.3 report can motivate people to waste less food and help communities everywhere reach the SDG Target 12.3 by 2030.

This story originally appeared on Food Tank.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to How businesses can grow $1 to $14 by reducing food waste
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Bite/2017/0315/How-businesses-can-grow-1-to-14-by-reducing-food-waste
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe